Never Been Awake Before
by ArkQueetely
Summary: Maybe a lot of things had changed that she couldn't even comprehend – and that filled her with both fear and a strange kind of rebellious confidence. Anna/Wendla.


_A/N: Originally posted at LJ 9/1/07. Thanks to LJ user dreamsofstars for betaing. Dedicated to LJ user prosopopeya. Title taken from Switchfoot - "Something More (Augustine's Confession)"_

Ever since Anna had moved to this town, they'd been friends.

Sitting on a park bench, her parents chatting with the pastor, Anna watched the other girls play.

Back then, only a few years ago, Wendla wasn't the leader. It was Ilse that all the girls were looking to -- with her long, perfect hair, and a mature look about her that made Anna feel plain and out of place. Ilse, who was wild and risky and exciting.

But, it wasn't Ilse's somehow contradictorily fragile blue eyes that had met Anna's that day. No, the gaze was warm, friendly, dark. Wendla Bergmann, a pillar of confidence, had strolled right away from the other girls without a word and walked right up to Anna.

"You're the new girl," she said.

And so they began.

Wendla was like no friend Anna had known. She was used to being the outcast, the nice girl everyone liked but no one liked best. There were days when she thought she would've given up all those good graces she was in to have one person who would do the same for her. When she and Wendla sat in the Bergmann's garden, chatting for hours until the sun colored the flowers shades of orange, she began to think she wouldn't have to.

They never really talked about Ilse.

Anna wasn't sure how she felt about that. It was as though, over the course of only a couple days, Ilse had disappeared from their lives and they were just going to accept this and move on. Anna didn't know what they could've done or said, but it felt like they should have done something. She felt like she was witnessing some injustice being condoned, and she didn't even know what the injustice was.

However, things were not normal. They quickly found themselves in a quandary of sorts. Everything was straightforward among them when Ilse was around. She was risky and courageous and full of ideas and they weren't – not like that. Without her, things grew quiet. The girls drifted apart.

That was, until Wendla.

Anna saw a change in Wendla, more than any of them, in the absence of Ilse. She found Wendla withdrawn at first – the life in her eyes dulled. Anna would talk to her, lay a land on hers, desperate to try and rouse that cheer in her friend again. It was selfish, she knew – she needed Wendla, needed someone to be that pillar she could not be for herself. Her attempts were in vain anyway -- Wendla's smiles were fake and her touch meant nothing to Anna, not when it was that cold.

When Wendla rose again, it was just as sudden as her fall. Suddenly she was energetic, determined – a sort of angry energy filled her. They could not fall apart because Wendla wasn't going to let them fall apart. Wendla took on this task with a vengeance and soon it seemed like their attempts to deny the pain of Ilse's absence really could be kept up.

Anna thought she should be happy. They needed this. It wasn't a question – it was the only way she saw for things to go, the only way that didn't end in tears. But, as they all rallied around Wendla, she couldn't help but feel there was something of hers that she lost.

It was a couple years later that Anna started to see a change in herself.

She didn't see herself cross the line because she didn't know there was one until she was far on the other side. That line, somewhere in space, that separated friend from far away object of admiration. Anna and Wendla hadn't been Anna and Wendla for a long while. Now, it was Wendla, Thea, Martha, and Anna, and once again she felt, with something like guilt gnawing at her gut, that she'd trade both Thea and Martha, such good friends of hers, to have Wendla more to herself again.

She could get by if it was just that – again. But, it wasn't.

Anna couldn't help but notice – who couldn't? she thought -- how they were all starting to... grow up. When they were apart – passing each other in the town, in class, and even, she admitted to herself guiltily, in church – Anna no longer felt the obligation to be the friend, and she could watch Wendla. The way she seemed to be endlessly pulsing with confidence and charisma, and... the way that dress, growing too short on her as her fourteenth birthday approached, was quickly beginning to show curve to her frame, something Anna found herself lingering on more and more often. When Wendla once almost caught her gazing she felt like one of the boys, gaping at the girls from a distance.

Even making that connection, she was able to dismiss any of her guilt. Wendla was a lovely girl – she gained everyone's attention, certainly.

It was a sunny Sunday, and the four of them, as always, broke away from their parents after church and wandered down the path together.

They tried to be good, pious children. However, they had a lot on their minds, or Anna certainly did, and she found her attention waning as the Sundays passed. They never really talked about church – not really. Sure, they discussed church events and that sort of thing, but the sermons? Anna couldn't remember a time when they'd talked about one in anything more than passing.

Today was different.

"You know what Father Kahlbach meant, don't you?" Thea said in a scandalous tone.

"What do you mean?" Wendla inquired with disinterest.

"_Sodomites_," Thea said with a look of distaste, and she jerked her head in in the direction of Hänschen Rilow, who was standing nearby looking bored out of his mind among the town's post-church chatter.

"Hänschen Rilow?" Anna said, her eyebrows furrowed. "What about him?"

"Haven't you heard?" Thea said incredulously.

"Heard what?" Anna said with genuine confusion.

Thea lowered her voice as if she were afraid someone would overhear. "Hänschen Rilow likes other boys," she said, her voice laden with a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

Anna almost physically jerked back, at Thea's tone as much as her words. "Really?" she managed, flustered.

"I can't believe you haven't heard," Wendla whispered, and the sound of her voice made the color drain from Anna's face.

"You know," Thea said in a tone that suggested she had gossip, and the other girls turned to her eagerly. "I heard he actually kissed Ernst Röbel."

Anna was saved the trouble of reacting when Martha interrupted, saying, "We better start walking if we want a good couple hours down by the lake today."

"Oh, yes, we better," Wendla said, and when Anna didn't immediately move, she took her hand.

If it hadn't been for how she was feeling right then – oh, who was she kidding? When Wendla took her hand it sent a jolt through her and that just made it all worse, and she quickly sputtered out, "I think I might go home – I'm not feeling well."

Wendla turned and cocked her head with concern. "You're sure, Anna?"

Anna nodded numbly, pulling her hand away. The other girls exchanged looks of concern, told her she better go home and lie down, then, and Anna muttered that she would.

She waited, standing awkwardly, until the other girls were gone and the adults had all left the front of the church. Then she ran, her steps feeling far too heavy and slow, behind the church and into the graveyard. She let herself fall heavy to the ground behind one of the headstones and pulled up her knees to her chest. She fought back the nauseated feeling that plagued her.

It wasn't the same, was it? She wouldn't have done that, wanted that, like... Hänschen Rilow. Right?

Anna always said her prayers, confident and certain, kneeling before her bed. Her mother would come in, catching the end of her piously whispered words and smile a little. When Anna was safely under her covers, her mother turned out the light for her, kissed her on the cheek and wished her a goodnight, same as always, since she was been a child.

When she was left alone in her room, the moon sending light through her curtains, broken by the tree branches outside her window, she did not pray again.

She conversed.

She stared up at her ceiling as though maybe she could see some glimpse of Heaven itself beyond its barrier, but it seemed strange and foreign to say Heaven like that. It doesn't feel like a prayer -- she's already said those.

_It feels like it's been a long time since we've talked._

These tears were different than any other time she'd cried.

_I don't know what it is I want._

She didn't feel them coming, she could just feel the way they slide over her skin, and her breathing was growing heavier.

_I don't know who I am anymore._

She doesn't expect an answer.

She felt uneasy the next day as she went about her daily routine. The heaviness in her chest that weighed her down through the night had lifted, but the aching uncertainty that was left behind was disconcerting.

She told her parents she was leaving to visit Thea, but she wasn't sure how she'd be able to look the other girls in the eye without them somehow seeing through her, sensing her confusion. She went down to the lake, alone, for the first time she could remember, and it felt like she shouldn't be able to know her way without them.

Anna wasn't sure how much time passed. She sat against a tree and stared out at the gently pulsing water, watching the ducks. She felt like she should be trying to figure things out – thinking, turning ideas over in her mind, coming to terms with herself. Instead she watched at the patterns the light made on the water and tried to put everything away.

A chill settled in the air, and Anna pulled herself out of the serenity and headed back in the direction of home. She felt numb all over, and not just from the cold, as she took careful steps – feeling as though she hadn't walked in a long time. She looked up and her heart stopped.

Wendla was rushing down the path, biting her lip and looking generally anxious. When her eyes landed on Anna, a look of delightful surprise spread over her face. She rushed over and before Anna had time to think beyond her alarm, Wendla's fingers were clutching her wrist, pulling her back toward the lake. "Anna, I need to talk to you," she said, sounding breathless.

Anna struggled for an excuse to avoid it, but she wasn't sure if her brain just neglected to supply her with an idea, or if she wasn't really trying. Somewhere in her the idea of being with Wendla was still appealing.

Soon they were down by the lake again and Wendla was pulling Anna down to the base of the tree with a frightened rapture.

Quickly, Anna found herself on the receiving end of the recollection of a moment in time from the previous day. While Anna had been alone with her feelings, Wendla had been out in the woods gathering woodruff and had an encounter with none other than the charming and rebellious Melchior Gabor – as if that weren't enough to make a young girl's heart flutter, he walked her home. And they held hands.

Anna pushed away the jealousy for both ends of that coupling firmly out of her mind, and said, in her best attempt at cheer, "Melchior Gabor, really?"

Wendla sighed and smiled a shaky smile. "Really..."

They stared out at the lake, trying to ignore the chill, resigned to their thoughts. Anna's jealousy was dying down as she forced herself to look at the situation in a more reasonable light, and in its absence she felt lonely and resigned. Beside her, in a low, thoughtful tone, Wendla said, "I couldn't help but think, if I were someone braver, or more... rebellious... like him, or... Ilse..."

At the mention of Ilse's name, Anna was taken aback. It had been a long time since she'd thought about the girl, but the unchanging tone of Wendla's voice suggested that the name was not unfamiliar to her tongue.

"Then...?" Anna prompted, raising her eyebrows.

"Then..." Wendla furrowed her brow. "Then, maybe I would've done something riskier than that – something exciting. Maybe even... kissed him." Her tone is scandalous, and the fantasy in Wendla's eyes implied she would never have had had the courage to do any such thing.

Anna felt nervous and confused, but there was a kind of comfort there, too. Her and Wendla, sitting by the lake, talking about boys... it was almost like they'd gone back in time. For this moment, close friends again, speaking in confidence. It was this feeling that inspired Anna to inquire, in a hushed tone, "Have you ever kissed anyone, Wendla?"

Wendla's reaction was sheepish and she answerd, "No."

The shy smile that passed between them felt strange and different. Anna glanced for a moment out at the lake, and her mind went to Ilse. She could see it in Wendla, she realized. How in Ilse's absence, Wendla picked up so much of the missing girl, whether she could see it herself or not – and Anna considered that she probably did. Somehow this put Anna a little more at ease, but that feeling lead to a rush of other thoughts, other things she was trying not to think about. Wendla wasn't the same girl that Anna knew last time they were close friends – not so obedient and devout, but more curious, more questioning. And, Anna considered – _she_ wasn't the same person either. Maybe a lot of things had changed that she couldn't even comprehend – and that filled her with both fear and a strange kind of rebellious confidence.

Anna looked to Wendla, letting her eyes travel the gentle curves of her profile. She decided, then, that lately she had been doing far too much regretting and not enough risk-taking.

It was with this thought that Anna reached her hand – and there her hand was, in the air, and it was too late now, she might as well, _don't think _– and shakily brushed the hair from Wendla's face, letting the nervous racing of her heart drown out anything her mind might tell her about sin or the questioning expression on her friend's face. Uncertainly, not nearly with enough of the conviction she wanted, she leaned in, shutting her eyes tightly as though maybe, if it all went wrong, she could block it out that way. But, Wendla did not jerk away like she feared, but let their lips meet shyly. They lingered that way for a moment and Anna felt the light pressure of Wendla's slender fingers on her arm.

It felt too short, and it was not much time at all in truth, when they parted. Wendla's hand was still resting on Anna's arm, and Anna felt like her breaths were shudders. She tried to meet Wendla's eyes, to read them, but Wendla just stared at the ground. Finally their eyes met, and Anna could see, however much else had changed, that those eyes were the same ones she remembered from their first meeting. She wasn't sure what that meant to her.

Finally, Wendla let out a long breath simply nodded, and then looked away, biting her lip and hiding a shy smile. Anna's stomach gave a twist at the thought that it might've been she who had evoked this reaction.

They sat for a while, looking out at the water, caught up in their own thoughts again. Anna's eyes trailed after the ducks on the water while her mind trailed back to that kiss. She felt a smile tugging at her lips and a lightness in her chest. She considered that perhaps this was wrong, and a sin, and perhaps she would never get this opportunity again -- instead becoming that respectable housewife – but she couldn't help but think that she could resign herself to almost anything of the sort now, because she could remember this moment and be content.


End file.
